Interpreting Henry IV: The Men in Buckram
A. J. A.
WALDOCK1
The critical problems of Henry IV are well-worn, but there is
still, I think, matter of instruction in them.
I would suggest that nearly all these problems are referable to
one underlying cause: the variability of texture in Shakespearean
drama. A Shakespearean play does not necessarily stay precisely
the same kind of play throughout every inch of its length. The
essential fallacy, surely, in the approach of a Bradley was the
assumption that any play of Shakespeare's is made of exactly the
same stuff from beginning to end of it: that any given part of it
can be pressed on, handled, pulled about in precisely the same
way as any other part: that the tensile strength (so to say) of the
dramatic material remains perfectly uniform from start to finish.
But this does not always happen. We can move, in a Shakespearean play, between slightly different levels of reality-we can
keep moving backwards and forwards between them-and all this
without noticeable strain. Audiences adapt themselves to such
shifts and fluctuations with the greatest ease: they realize instinctively what is going on: and so do readers when they are left
to themselves. But in these selfsame shifts and fluctuations lie
the possibilities of later trouble. When we stop and think, reflect
and scrutinize, we are likely, of course, to be struck by difficulties
that in a theatre, or in a quick reading, would hardly have been
noticed, or would have caused us no very grave concern. It is in
that way that Shakespearean problems are born-or a very great
many of them.
Many of these problems may, I think, be dispelled-for it is a
question rather of dispelling than of solving-by bringing to bear
on them the principle just noted. We can fancy something in the
process a little analogous to the methods and results of psychoanalysis. Let us face up squarely to the cause of a neurosis and
it fades; let us realize the cause of some of these time-honoured
Shakespearean problems (Falstaff's "cowardice", Hal's "priggishA. J. A. Waldock was Challis Professor of English Literature at the
University of Sydney from 1934 until his death in 1950. This essay,
under the title "The Men in Buckram", was first published in The
Review of English Studies, XXIII (1947), 16-23. It is reprinted with
grateful acknowledgement to the Oxford University Press.
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ness") and, though the difficulties in a sense still remain, the
"problems" become unreal, not worth arguing about.
I doubt whether the full elucidatory value of this principle is
even yet quite recognized. I do not think there is a major problem in the Henry IV plays to which it does not apply.
Consider, for example, the rejection of Falstaff and the worry
that this event has caused.. The worry is not unjustified; there is
a reason for it. But it is of little help to attack this question
ethically, in the old way; or, by proving that Shakespeare was
intending so-and-so, to demonstrate that our responses were
meant to be so-and-so. It is easy to see what Shakespeare meant:
the important question is what he did. If we study the nature of
the problem that he himself faced here, and the technical devices
by which he coped with it, we are led immediately, I think, to
the source of the trouble; the cause of the worry is disclosed.
It arises, surely, from the fact that the Henry IV plays are not
perfectly homogeneous. The plays have been proceeding on two
different levels: the level of the upper-plot and the level of the
under-plot. And these two plots have been differentiated not
merely in locality, interest, action: they have been differentiated.
in texture. Essentially, in this one drama two different kinds of
play have been going on, calling, on our part, for two quite
perceptibly distinct mental attitudes. Where Falstaff, especially,
is concerned it has meant that a whole set of moral responses
which we customarily bring to bear-and which we bring to
bear here in the other part of the play-is automatically swung
out of action; a whole set of values is held in abeyance while we
enjoy Falstaff. There is little use in saying that we both enjoy
him and disapprove of him; the enjoyment is so intense that the
disapproval (so long as we are responding naturally and not reflecting in afterthought) is and must be utterly ineffective.
Then, all of a sudden, after two whole plays of not judging,
we are called on to judge. Shakespeare has done something, no
doubt, to soften the jar: the shadier side of Falstaff has been
more in evidence in Part II than in Part I; but all that he has
been able to do will not really suffice. Falstaff is violently transported from one dramatic plane to another. Naturally we feel
that there is an unfairness somewhere, though we are often a little
puzzled to locate it. The root of the matter, surely, lies in this
technical necessity of, at the end, joining two different and not
perfectly compatible kinds of drama, and making them one kind.
It is as if we had been listening, in alternation, to two melodies:
the melody of the main-plot and the melody of the sub-plot; and
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they are in different keys. But the very last note of Falstaff's
story is played, not in its own key, but in the other. The result
is a sharp discord.
I turn for the present, however, to a slighter matter, but one
where the issues are perfectly definite: the aftermath of Gad's
Hill, and especially the passage in which Falstaff mounts the
scale of the assailants in buckram suits-two, four, seven, nine,
eleven-who set upon him. Falstaff enters damning all cowards;
then after a little the narrative begins. There were a hundred
upon poor four of them. At the Prince's protesting cry Falstaff
makes a slight abatement: he alone took on a dozen, anyway. A
moment later it is "sixteen at least", as he and Gadshill compete
in enumeration. "Then come in the other", and if fifty, or two
and three and fifty were not upon poor old Jack, he is no twolegged creature.
Then the narrative takes the turn that the audience have been
waiting for: "Nay, that's past praying for: I have peppered two
of them; two I am sure I have paid, two rogues in buckram suits".
The account continues:
Fal.
I tell thee what, Hal, if I tell thee a lie, spit in my face,
call me horse. Thou knowest myoid ward; here I lay,
and thus I bore my point. Four rogues in buckram let
drive at me-Prince. What, four? thou saidst but two even now.
Fal.
Four, Hal; I told thee four.
Poins. Ay, ay, he said four.
Fal.
These four came all a-front, and mainly thrust at me. I
made me no more ado but took all their seven points in
my target, thus.
Prince. Seven? why, there were but four even now.
Fal.
In buckram?
Poins. Ay, four, in buckram suits.
Fal.
Seven, by these hilts, or I am a villain else.
Prince. Prithee, let him alone; we shall have more anon.
Fal.
Dost thou hear me, Hal?
Prince. Ay, and mark thee too, Jack.
Fal.
Do so, for it is worth the listening to. These nine in
buckram that told thee of-Prince. So, two more already.
Fal.
Their points being broken-Pains. Down fell their hose.
Fal.
Began to give me ground; but I followed me close, came
in foot and hand and with a thought seven of the eleven
I paid.
Prince. 0 monstrous! eleven buckram men grown out of two.
(II. iv. 213)2
2
The references are to The Globe Shakespeare.
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What is to be made of it? Does it mean that in some way Falstaff is "in the know"? Is he conscious of what is happening as
he climbs the impossible ladder of exaggeration-four, seven,
nine, eleven? Is he in the joke, is he doing it deliberately, and
has he winked at the audience or in some way contrived to let
them know what is really going on? Most modern editors and
critics still answer "yes", to all these questions.
Professor Dover Wilson's view (arrived at after some hesitation) is that Falstaff must have been "in the know" from the
very start. That is, he really did (as he claims later) recognize
his assailants at Gad's Hill. The present scene, therefore, is mere
play-acting on his part from start to finish-he never expected
to be believed-and Shakespeare intended at least the "brighter
sort" to gather as much from the dialogue and the stage business,
a "secret understanding" being built up in this way between Falstaff and the audience.
I think that in this interpretation Professor Wilson is being a
little disloyal to his own basic tenets. It is one of his principles
(applied again and again to the great illumination of these very
plays) that one must never lose sight of the actual conditions of
theatrical performance. He has a half-sense himself that he is
forsaking that principle here, but he sees no help for it. lI The
"arithmetical progression" of those numbers is too much to
swallow: it is simply impossible to think that Falstaff at this point
still expected to be believed; and nothing seems left, therefore,
but to conclude that he had been laughing at the Prince and Poins,
"behind his hand", from the very outset of the scene.
This interpretation has to face, not one or two difficulties, but
a whole cluster of them. First as to "theatre", and the natural,
obvious impressions of the scene. Professor Wilson himself,
though he feels he must conclude that this is what Shakespeare
was driving at, confesses that only "the judicious" had much
chance of taking such a meaning; the duller members of the
audience would have continued in the belief that Falstaff was (so
to say) in earnest, that he really was trying to "put over" his
story. Think, then, what we have. Poins and the Prince are
laughing at Falstaff; he, secretly, is laughing at them; nine-tenths
of the audience (the "barren" sort) believe with the Prince and
Poins that the joke is on Falstaff; the other tenth know that it
isn't and are themselves laughing outright at the Prince and Poins
(because their legs are being pulled) and secretly at the rest of
3
6
See The Fortunes of Falstaff, 1944, p. 52.
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the audience (because theirs are being pulled too). And Shakespeare must have known as well as anyone that it would turn out
this way. Can we really believe that he planned the scene on
such terms?
Second: there is a remark of Falstaff's at the very end of the
passage that is surely of significance in this connexion (II.iv.31O):
Prince.
Fal.
Content: and the argument shall be thy running away.
Ab, no more of that, Hal, an thou lovest me!
What does this mean? Does it not mean that if Falstaff ever
blushed he was blushing now, that he was feeling just the least
bit silly, that in short he really had been found out, and knew it?
What point would there be in such a reply, with its deprecatory
air, if Falstaff had had the laugh on them all along? Professor
Wilson brushes it aside with the comment-in which for once,
it seems to me, he out-Bradleys Bradley-that it shows Falstaff
"humouring" the Prince. 4
And there are many other things that such an interpretation
renders pointless. The Prince asks Bardolph how Falstaff's sword
came to be so hacked, and poor Bardolph lets him into the
secret. Falstaff hacked it himself and got the others to tickle
their noses with speargrass so that they might bloody their
clothes. Are we to understand that Falstaff insisted on this
degree of realism and circumstantiality, though he knew perfectly
well all the time that they were not going to be believed? This
would have been going one better than the actor in Dickens who
blacked his body allover every time he played Othello. It will
be recollected, again, that it is a long time before the Prince and
Poins cease teasing Falstaff about the "instinct" that made him
run away, a long time before they stop pulling his leg about his
having known them as well as the Lord that made them. They,
at all events, never drop to the truth of the matter-never to the
very end of the plays.
Professor Kittredge5 has a slightly different theory: he compromises. He cannot bring himself to believe that Falstaff was
aware of the facts from the very beginning; but equally he cannot
believe that Falstaff remained unaware of them to the very end.
At a certain point in the dialogue, he thinks-he is even prepared
to indicate the exact spot-Falstaff "caught on": became suspicious, and then became quite sure, that the Prince had played
4
5
Op. cit., p. 56.
Henry IV, ed. G. L. Kittredge, 1940.
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him a trick. At this he changed his tactics, began to burlesque
his own style, to exaggerate as a counter-measure-for the mere
fun of it, and also to provide himself with a good reply if presently (as now he was pretty sure would happen) he were taxed.
Kittredge thinks that Falstaff's suspicions turned into certainties
at about the line "Ay, ay, he said four".
Professor Wilson's retort to this is that it is treating the drama
as if it were a novel. I think it is, though much the same complaint could be brought against Professor Wilson's own view. It
is not true, perhaps, to say absolutely that Kittredge's reading
could not be conveyed: in principle, an actor could convey such
a meaning, no doubt. But one is at least justified in wondering
whether, in all the circumstances of the scene, he could convey it.
As for the text as it stands, it gives, of course, no indication-not
the slightest-that at this or that point Falstaff "caught on".
But we still have the difficulty of the "arithmetical progression".
That passage, indeed, is the real difficulty: if it were not there,
there would be no talk of Falstaff's having recognized the Prince,
there would be no argument about the scene at all. The mounting
numbers are the crux. Could Falstaff have expected still to be
believed--could he have remained unconscious of the absurdity
of what he was saying-there?
The answer is: no-if this were happening in real life; but
because it is happening in a play, and because a Shakespearean
play can be of variable texture-yes.
The logic of the passage, I would suggest, is as follows. It has
an obvious psychological basis in the heightenings, the embellishments, the improvings, the pilings-on of one who is telling a
sensational and highly successful yarn. I need not labour this
point, or the equally obvious one that Falstaff's self-contradictions
here quite outdo anything in nature. In real life-or by the conventions of even a moderately realistic play-the "arithmetical
progression" would be more than improbable, it would be impossible. Very well: for the moment or two required Shakespeare
changes the conventions, and then a second or two later changes
them back again. (This, of course, is merely the critical interpretation of what went on. I do not mean for a moment to
suggest that Shakespeare thought of what he was doing in this
light-he was too expert at the game to have to think about such
a trifle as this at all; or that audiences while they are watching
such a scene say to themselves: "Ah, a change of convention!"
They respond instinctively.) The scene rises at this point to a
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climax of what is nothing less than vaudeville; that is its quality
just here. Just for these few moments the realistic conventions
drop away: we make a quick readjustment of attitude (all, of
course, quite instinctively and unconsciously): we accept the
scene as the ultimate burlesque, the reductio ad absurdum of
the sort of exaggeration that is a familiar part of our daily experience. This, at least, is what we should do-not asking how
Falstaff could have expected to be believed (as the editor of the
new Variorum text asks); knowing perfectly well that-if the
play were still continuing on a realistic basis-he could never
have expected it; but granting, for the fun, that he does expect it.
The implication is that Falstaff, while he is going up the scale
of those numbers, steps slightly out of rOle; and that, as I see it,
is so. He is, for the moment, a more abstract Falstaff, a Falstaff
whose identity has been merged, just for these few instants, with
that of a typical vaudeville comedian. It is all over so quickly
that there is little chance of real disturbance under the actual
conditions of the theatre, or of rapid, natural reading. If the
passage had lasted much longer there would have been a chance
of real disturbance; the audience would have felt a strangeness
coming over the scene. We are, that is to say, near the limit of
tolerance-for audiences; far beyond it, needless to say, for
critics, or for leisurely, probing, inquisitive readers; for it is precisely the extremity of the variation here from the normal texture
of the underplot that is behind the endless puzzlement over the
passage and debate upon it.
The process I have described is not subtle or unusual or in any
way extraordinary; it may be observed in film-comedies any day
of the week. In these the variations of texture can be of the
wildest, yet audiences accept the variations with the greatest ease.
Such a comedy will often begin on what is to all appearances a
normal, fairly realistic basis, and for a while the humour may be
on that level, quite credible and life-like. But if such a comedy
is featuring a comedian whose specialty is rollicking farce then
the audience knows perfectly well that the realism is but temporary. Presently the tempo will liven, the quality of the fun
will grow more and more extravagant, until we reach (it may be)
the plane of sheer vaudeville. On this plane the comedy may
continue for half an hour-all its central stretch. Then the fun
may subside somewhat, we may begin a descent of the planes
again. Presently (the conventions, as it were, gradually changing
back) we find ourselves on the level of ordinary, credible comedy
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on which we began. (This is not an imaginary picture. I jot
down the scheme, in fact, from the general drift of such a comedy
seen only the other day. Readers may test the matter for themselves.)
I am not suggesting that such comedies are good art, any more
than I suggest that the particular variation in question in Henry
IV is good art, though it furnishes an effective enough climax.
In itself, however, the passage is not nearly as funny as the
comedy that surrounds it; it is cruder, thinner. And in our
studies, poring over the play, we feel this comparative thinness
and crudity, and set about attempting to enrich the texture of the
passage at the same time as we are removing its incredibility. I
merely make the point that these variations of texture-or mountings and descendings of planes within the action-are commonplaces of popular comedy, and probably always have been; and
that the Falstaffian comedy, so much richer in its characteristic
veins, is capable, within fairly strict limits, of similar variations;
and that it is such a variation here, and nothing else, that has
caused all the difficulty and the bother.
I add one further note. The attitude of the Prince and Poins
throughout the whole scene is obviously of the greatest importance. From start to finish of it they give the audience the cues.
They tell the audience, in the first place, what to expect. The
jest is to consist in the "incomprehensible lies" that the fat rogue
will tell, and in the refuting of them: "lies", be it noted, not just
(in Professor Wilson's phrase) "a feast of braggadocio"6; they
are looking for more than that. The audience, in short, are given
a plain "tip" to look forward to the confounding of Falstaff. And
they are not disappointed: he is confounded, utterly. But even
while the confounding is in process-while the Prince delivers the
true tale-he is pulling himself together. The Prince's speech is
a fairly long one-ample time for Falstaff; by the end of it he is
ready. Out he comes with the most magnificent lie of all, the
superlative fabrication that by its very unexpected outrageousness
brings down the house and sets all the audience laughing with
him again: "By the Lord, I knew ye as well as he that made ye".
Again, in the crucial passage itself the attitude of the Prince
and Poins is, I think, decisive. They, of course, never suspect
that Falstaff is not contradicting himself in all innocence. They
are careful not to bring him to a complete halt, they nudge one
6
10
Op. cit., p. 55.
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another, they wink, perhaps, at the audience ("Ay, and mark
thee too, Jack"). At all events there is surely not an atom of
doubt that it is they and the audience who are in league just here,
not the audience and Falstaff. In any scene of this type, that is
the natural, almost the inevitable situation, the audience taking
their lead from those on the stage who are busy drawing out the
comedian. If they do not respond in this way it will only be
because of some absolutely decisive prompting. Is there really
room for such prompting here? Falstaff has begun in a tone of
indignation ("A plague of all cowards", "A King's son", and so
on) and he keeps it up. He is acting the part of one who wants
to be believed, and there is no indication that he diverges from
the part. In the "arithmetical progression" piece itself Falstaff's
tone does not alter: "Four, Hal; I told thee four" (wagging an
admonitory finger); "In buckram?" (the fatuous, earnest, distinction-drawing tone, as if to say: "Mind, I'm talking about the
buckram ones now: don't get confused"); "Dost thou hear me,
Hal?" (he will permit no slackness of attention). To my mind, at
least, the fun is spoilt if we imagine that somewhere hereabouts
he relaxed his attitude, began to show that he was enjoying his
own performance, started to share the joke with the audience.
But more than that. If we take the tone of each remark as it
comes (in the way I have just clumsily tried to do) I do not think
that we can imagine his relaxing; the two attitudes are not really
compatible.
I need hardly add that unless Falstaff's enjoyment of his joke
is manifest to someone-if not to the Prince and Poins, then at
least to the audience-it does not exist. To say that he is enjoying
his joke secretly is to say something that does not make dramatic
sense. 7
7
Since the foregoing was written I have had an opportunity of hearing
some details of the recent presentation in London of the Henry plays
by the Lawrence Olivier company. It is interesting (though not surprising) to learn that Mr Ralph Richardson as Falstaff took the
"arithmetical progression" passage easily in his stride, and that at this
point there was not the slightest suggestion of collusion between
Falstaff and the audience.
Miss Sheila G. Mackay (whom I commissioned to observe for me)
writes: "Falstaff (Ralph Richardson) doesn't recognise the Prince and
Poins at the hold-up. Later, telling the tale, he plays it straight-he
makes as good a story as he can get away with. He doesn't know that
the Prince and Poins know. He probably forgets (what with his own
imagination and the interruptions) his latest exaggeration. It is a genuine shock when they challenge him. 'Is not the truth the truth?' says
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